At the heart of Canada's rush towards liquified natural gas, Kitimat, B.C., is poised to boom

It's been more than a decade since the global oil and gas industry began its plan to send millions of tonnes of natural gas across the Rocky Mountains, to British Columbia's western coast and on to Asia.

Now, despite fierce opposition from some environmental experts and First Nations people along its 670-kilometre route, the controversial Coastal GasLink pipeline is almost complete.

But the project's uncertain economic and environmental impacts are already beginning to materialize in coastal Kitimat, B.C., the northern port community that will soon host the project's central terminal.

Less than 15 kilometres away sits Kitamaat Village, home of the Haisla First Nation. Hereditary Chief Sammy Robinson's garage door is open onto the Douglas Channel as he sits inside, carving the trunk of a cedar tree into a totem pole.

The Elder, who will soon celebrate his 89th birthday, was a teen when it all began.

The Haisla have lived in Kitamaat for thousands of years, stewarding the land. "I didn't see a white man until I was 15 years old, I didn't see a plane until I was 15 years old," said Robinson.

But that changed in the early 1950s, as company men from aluminum manufacturer Alcan began to arrive in the region, scoping it out to build a factory and then a port that could bring their products from the end of the fjord to the world.

The factory, and the jobs that building and running it required, established Kitimat as a commercial hub. Soon, more companies came.

In the decades since Alcan arrived, Kitimat's population has fluctuated with the booms and busts of the natural resources industry. In 2010, the community was devastated when the closure of West Fraser Timber's Eurocan pulp and paper mill caused 500 people's jobs to disappear.

Now in his thirties, Kitimat-born Nick Markowsky can still remember those grim years.

But a promised gust of prosperity from the Coastal GasLink project is now blowing into the town, one that gave Markowsky and business partner Brandon Highton confidence to start a new venture.

"Growing up, we saw a lot of the industries leave town and shut their doors, which definitely had an impact on the community that was thriving and made it a bit stale for a while," said Markowsky from his beer brewery's taproom, noting that recent projects have changed that.

"I would have never thought that we would be back here."

Their ultramodern micro-brewery, Two Peaks Brewing, opened in the centre of town just two months ago.